I know that he was saying it to assure Darkrai, but I can't help but think that part of Mewtwo going, "This *will* work." was him reassuring himself too, based on what we saw last page and the final calibrations on the arrays... plus the whole thing being a theoretical construct based from the Purification Machine from XD Gale of Darkness.

@ILeninVelikyNamPutOzaril Just wanted to correct you on one point -- we only know of 3 XDs at this point. 001, Shadow Lugia, which was presumably captured and purified by Michael as per XD: Gale of Darkness's story; 002, Darkrai, who Mewtwo and co. are assembling/have assembled a purification machine to purify him right now; and 003, Victini, who we last saw fall into the abyss of broken reality when she jumped Jen trying to fix everything.
But yeah, there's still getting Jen, Wes, Lovrina, and presumably N, back to people-space, plus anything that will happen thereafter.

@Sanmari When they said 'Darkrai's Family', they did, in fact, mean all the legendaries; VF Canon is that they're one big ancient family. The uniqueness of legendaries are probably up to some debate; a fanfic author I read put up an interesting observation about there having to be multiple Resharim and Zekrom in existence if the movies and anime are canon to one another, as an example of this.
And you'd like to think that this would be the case, as Lovrina tortured *two* demigods and is still alive, but my guess is that most of the other Legendaries are either busy with their own realms/jobs, or aren't allowed to do something because that'd come with more serious repercussions... or they're too far down the pecking order to have the kind of power to help (See: the Birds vs their 'Trio Master', Lugia, or the Beasts vs Ho-oh)

@Ngamer01 What I believe Mewtwo is talking about, with Miracle Eye bit, is that most people take the 'immune to psychic' to the full extent allowed, usually putting dark types as dead/null spaces in a crowd of people... basically, an empty void in the flow of the sub-/un- conscious. So, he's gonna use Miracle Eye to be able to mentally touch Darkrai, and through him, all the psychics will be able to hopefully be able to exorcise the 'irremovable' XD taint that exists in Darkrai.

@Guest No, I mean him. VF's Mewtwo still did "Pokémon: The First Movie" as his canon; he brings up the whole "world ending storm" he conjured up when he's talking with Darkrai in pg 568, and I'm pretty sure there's a flashback sequence panel in a past strip as well that shows part of the scene near the end, when everyone's fighting their clone, and Ash Does A Heroic Stupid; furthermore, Lovrina tries to pull his "destroy everyone in the lab upon coming awake" in Cinnibar as a bit of blackmail that he defuses in front of her while he's trying to work out what we know now is a purification machine. I didn't mean to infer he was evil, though, merely that he's representative of humanity's drive to "make a bigger weapon", and he's seeming to be driven to make sure no one has to be/stay the victim of such ideas if he can help it.

@Guest Mewtwo's driven probably because he's first hand proof of the evils of man's use of technology -- a genetic enhanced clone of Mew for the sake of a living weapon. He's determined, it seems, to prevent mandkind's ills from continuing to be inflicted upon pokémon, and to fix it when it happens.

Some of what Darkrai is saying is a metaphor for humanity too; we are violent beings at the core, and challenges are what drive humans to be what they are. While his words are in context for pokémon, a strong argument can be made for most of what Darkrai says in this strip being a reflection of the measure of a human as well.

After all, there are reasons why we have those sayings of "Beware the nice ones" and other stuff relating to the meek and quiet being some of the most terrifying among us... they've learned how to be gentle thanks to their challenges.

@SmartTurtle04 I knew it happened somewhere, and I wasn't sure which page it was on, so thanks for which page it happened; the 'they're... family' is what I was commenting on about, with the rune-name vs title.

@bonberjean That's because that is the runic old-script name for Arceus; on page 627, when the team got the space globe, that's the same rune as was on Arceus's statue, and there's a comic (which I'm not sure of right offhand) that Mewtwo starts to try and pronounce the rune and it comes out 'ar ke...' and then he gets cut off and gets told that they just use the term Original One instead because basically "the family" (All the natural legendary 'mons) are the only ones able/allowed to say his name in rune form.

@comercole If you mean Mewtwo, no, he's not that old. A search on Bulbapedia about Anime Mewtwo, coupled with looking at Ash, N, and the Best Wishes arc of the anime, says he's about 21, 22 or so; He was made approx. 20 years before the first movie, and Best Wishes implies the Johto arc of the anime (which was after the movie would have been placed in the anime timeline) was a year prior to it (despite Ash still being 10).

To the Guest commenting about status effects: Technically, yes, poison and burn are statuses; the usual depictions of them tend to be easier to see as a surface layer thing that a medical spray or a berry can quickly cure. Darkrai's implications of torture lean more to an ingested or injected poison, branding (remember, Jen saw XD-002 physically marked on him way back when she was seeing him in her sleep), and the kind of extended beating that leads to permanent physical injuries (as opposed to the fighting to exhaustion trainer battles do).

As to my own comments on the strip: I agree with others' comments about Lovrina being more in a state of stunned shock at the verbal beatdown one of the eldest of the legendaries has placed upon her. This is basically a 'The Reason You Suck' speech turned into potential nightmare fuel... and it's all her own fault.

@Shadow_Strikr It's because Darkrai is, when he's in a good frame of mind, an old fashioned gentleman. Everyone's Miss or Mister unless otherwise asked to be, and he's not as scary as his look and ability make him out to be.

I harbor lots of worry with what is going to happen, especially if N and Mewtwo aren't already at Lovrina. The punchline I sadly am gonna guess at is we see those two walk in and Darkrai is doing something possibly shadow inspired (pink hued eyes and all that jazz) showing Lovrina exactly what he thinks of her science-ing on him.

For the strip Blaze01 referenced, people'll be looking at 470 (Desync); he made the comment that he hasn't been that person in years, when he broke from the tranced war-machine state Mega Y put him in.

Onto what Lovrina is trying to do: I've suspicions she's trying to push buttons to gain an upper hand, or an easy means of escape. After all, if Mewtwo can be coerced to lashing out in anger, the chaos can let her slip away, and/or be turned against him and stuff. After all, Wes tried to "Good Cop, Bad Cop" her using boss kitty as the bad cop.

For the people bringing up all sorts of 'oh shoot' for Darkrai bringing up Victini being a sibling, keep in mind that, in this universe, it seems most important legendaries, if not most/all, are considered near-divine siblings, the (possibly direct) children of Arceus. Think back when Hoopa first noticed Mewtwo (page 421), he made a comment wondering if Bosskitty was "of the family or not", noting he has the look and power to have been one, but was mortal... so, in short, it sounds like all legendaries are related, except Mewtwo.

@littlekirby61524 From what I recall from some dex entries, part of the Medi's psychic power comes from inner discipline and focus... kinda an extension of reaching a zen like state of focus... so, if that's the case, then the lack of psychic power comes to a fat load of "no big deal". For many/most psychics, as a vague analogue: it'd be like spending your entire life being able to hear, and then suddenly, the entire world, yourself included, lost all sounds; you couldn't hear anything anymore. That's why Mewtwo, and apparently to a somewhat lesser extent, Gardevoir, shut down... they lost a sense entirely, one Mewtwo relied on so extensively, he became nearly non-functional in its loss. I suspect the same "loss of a sense" is probably part of why Darkrai went down too.
And before anyone really decides to say normal types got off easy, half of what makes a normal type special is their immense pool of potential moves, which were likely sealed by the strange effect like everything else... so Lopunny could probably have kicked butt, but it would have been closer to watching a martial artist punching and kicking stuff than the usual pokémon type attacks... which is partly why Jen stood a chance against a legendary who had better stats than her, in one-on-one combat... Jen knew how to fight without all the bells and whistles, everyone was gonna fight like animals... or humans...

@MidnightUser In random order:
Hoopa is, by game mechanics, a Legendary. As far as plot is concerned, he seems to be as well, due to his remarking on whether Mewtwo was "of the family" or not back on page 421.
And to 1 and 3 at the same time, it might be Arceus, or a fragment of his power, that she summoned. The final word in the runic oldspeech that Hoopa said, is almost exactly the one that Darkrai said when talking about Arceus (and Mewtwo almost sounded out verbally as he was processing it); the symbol was more wavy when said, and on Arceus's plinth in the tower back on 627, so my speculation is that it might well be the difference between calling him by a given name vs his true name.

@Satan(Guest): Well, yes, those bracelets look like MewTwo's collar because the collar is Hoopa marking him as owing a debt to the djinni.

I like how Jen takes a moment and finds the loophole to allow Hoopa to help; I feel that's why we get the chuckle out of the otherwisely enigmatic legendary at the end. After all, Hoopa gets plausible deniability out of this; he didn't do the act, he merely was showing how to do it if someone happened to be right in Jen's position... it's not his fault Jen was in the right position at the right time.

Jen's got two meta things going for her despite Victini having superior base stats. First, she's a protagonist; while not a be-all, end-all ability to not lose, it does provide for for tropes like "11th Hour Superpower". Second, this is the PMD universe, and while game mechanics are largely second fiddle to the story here, speed did kinda take a leave of absence when factoring how the games play; Super brought it back, but it affects accuracy/evasion there, not how fast you move... so yeah, she's a protagonist in a universe where speed is heavily moot.

Admittedly, as Guest mentioned, Victini's basically got a fist full of little blades, so while Jen gets a good blow with her martial arts, 003's best trick would be "Death of a Thousand Cuts", with lots of scratching across Jen as she's already done once.

While I'm sure that's still the XD-003 Victini, I'm also pretty sure she's realized she has limited access to any powers. Mewtwo cannot manifest his raw psionic might, Gengar can't keep his corporeal form, and we don't even know where the rest of the party is; there's every likelihood that the vast majority, if not all, of Victini's fire-power (literal and metaphorical) is useless too. And why isn't this really affecting Jen? Her power was never related to her being a pokemon; she took to support skills well, and had a move or two for defending herself, but her true power hasn't been tied to being a pokemon, so having her pokemon-given abilities stripped isn't all that effective.